Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

Above, fireworks flared, dressing the night in sequins. Someone shouted that it was time to eat, and, as sometimes happened, there was a good amount of food that evening. There was mithai from Prabjoht, whose job involved assembling boxes of the stuff, and fish pakoras from a boy whose massi gave him food parcels every week. A new arrival passed around fried chicken drumsticks. He was a heavy Panjabi with fingerless gloves. He looked like Gurpreet. Gurpreet. Randeep shut his eyes.

Hours later he woke up, still shivering. At least the gurdwara would be delivering more blankets tomorrow — one extra for everyone. They needed them now the freeze had begun. He sat up, rubbing his arms. The night wind had picked up too, and as he looked down the line of sleeping bodies, he saw that they had disappeared under a fugitive covering of dead brown leaves.

On Mondays she left the money on the kitchen table, the notes weighed down under the belly of a spoon. The money would be gone the next morning. She never saw him. He left before she came down, and she’d be in bed, the hour long past midnight, when she heard him return. There’d be the sound of a lighter being clicked, a pan being encouraged to boil.

Her room was at the rear of the house, on the first floor. His on the second. He’d told her to stick to her room, the kitchen and bathroom, and always to use the back door. They avoided the lounge and kept it unlit. She noticed one day that he’d removed all the light bulbs from any room with a window that looked out onto the street.

She was used to being alone in a house. The silence didn’t bother her. The emptiness did. The clean sweep of the walls, the dark consistency of the rooms. It was as if wherever she went she was confronted by herself, ridiculed. She spent much of the day by her bed, whispering to God — to keep her strong, not to abandon her.

One night she heard voices downstairs. She’d been kneeling on the ground and she stood and moved to the landing. She leaned over the banister, then quietly descended and watched from the entrance to the kitchen, holding the beads aside. He had his back to her and the garden door was open and she could see three men trying to look in. Indians, all.

‘We heard this had been empty for weeks. Months,’ one of them said.

‘Like I said, I live here,’ Tochi said.

‘You live here with her?’ the man said.

One of the others guffawed. Tochi said nothing.

‘Is he telling the truth?’ the man asked her. ‘Do you live here together?’

Narinder nodded.

‘You both in this big house?’

‘You’ll have to find somewhere else,’ Tochi said.

The men seemed to accept this.

‘Can you spare any food, friend?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve some dhal,’ Narinder said, coming into the kitchen a little. ‘You can have that.’

They came in — ‘Obliged, sister’ — and sat shivering around the table while she heated the dhal in the microwave. Once finished, they thanked her and said they’d be on their way. Tochi followed them through the side gate and watched them disappear down the road. When he came back she was still there.

‘Will they be all right?’ she asked.

He returned to his food on the cooker. ‘Don’t do that again.’

‘They were hungry. Would you let them starve?’

He said nothing and she went back through the beads and up the stairs.

She found the library again easily enough, and the lady’s name clicked into place the moment Narinder opened the door and saw her standing behind the reception desk. Jessica. It was, she later thought, a name well suited to white-haired ladies with bright blue eyes. Smiling, anxious, Narinder approached. She wanted to apologize, that was true. She had also wanted to get out of that house.

‘Narinder,’ Jessica said. ‘Well, better late than never, I say.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for letting you down.’

Jessica showed her to the staff kitchen, where the interview had taken place. ‘I’m a firm believer in the power of a good, strong brew.’ She plucked a box of camomile from the high cupboard. ‘I’m assuming you’ve come back because you still want the job?’

‘Oh, I’d love to. .’

‘You don’t sound very sure?’

‘You see, I’m only here for two or three months. Then I’ve got to go back home.’

‘That’s fine with me. It’s always busier in the winter. Unless you have better things to do?’

‘No, no. Definitely not. I don’t have anything to do. It’s just—’ She struggled to know how to say it. ‘I don’t want anyone to find me.’

Jessica filled the mugs with boiling water. ‘In that case, let’s just keep it all very informal, shall we?’

She loved the job. It was basic admin and filing and only for two or three days a week, but it rescued her from the accusatory silence of the house. She found she liked being around other people, kind people. It was its own peculiar balm. Only when she left the library and started for home did she fully remember that the immigration man was on to them and that Randeep still hadn’t been in touch. She’d tried calling him every day. At first his phone had gone straight to voicemail, as if it was switched off, but now it didn’t even do that, and all she got was a long dead note, flatlining. She couldn’t believe he’d run away, not this close to getting his stamp.

As she turned onto Ecclesall Road, she saw Tochi up ahead: she recognized his jacket, the ribbed collar arranged around his neck. There was something about the way he walked that had become familiar to her, something to do with the way he kept his elbows pressed to his sides. She expected him to take a left after the pub, then pass the school and climb to their road. He walked straight on. Perhaps he knew a shortcut, but when she got to the house he wasn’t there. Thirty minutes later he came in, and, without acknowledging her, went to his room.

She’d not been to the gurdwara for nearly a month now, not once since she’d been in the house. She knew she was avoiding it, was scared of it, scared of everyone taking one look at her and seeing how she was failing Him. It was easier to stay in her room, where she could convince herself that these feelings weren’t real, or were temporary and more to do with her situation than any change inside her. On Gurpurab, however, the pull was too great and she felt she had to go and pay her respects. She caught the bus after work, and, head bowed, went up to the darbar sahib and remained there until the end of the rehraas. Afterwards, she entered the langar hall, to share in the food. She saw her old friend Vidya coming towards her. She’d had her baby.

‘You should go,’ Vidya said, ushering Narinder out of the queue.

For a sickening moment, Narinder thought they really had seen inside her and were throwing her out.

‘Some men were here looking for you. Showing your photo to everyone.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes. Oh. So it’s better if you stay away.’

‘That’s my brother. He—’

‘I don’t need to know. It’s not safe here.’

She prayed that night. She took out from her suitcase the photo of Guru Nanak, stood it on the windowsill, and sat cross-legged before it. Waheguru is my ship and He will bear me safely across . It was one of her favourite lines. The words would surround the edge of her world in glimmering halo and she’d feel reassured. Not tonight. She repeated the words again and again but there came no halo, and there came no ship. There was only a frightening and oceanic darkness.

For two days she didn’t eat. She couldn’t. She felt hollowed out, as if some instrument had scooped away all appetite. On the third evening she forced herself to boil a quarter-cup of rice, which she sat at the table and ate with a glass of milk. She washed her plate and dried it with tissue-paper and set it aside. Then she returned the carton of milk to the fridge. As she closed the fridge door, she noticed on the upper shelf a second carton, opened. They wouldn’t get through both. Half would be wasted. She felt suddenly angry and left a note, in Panjabi, asking him to please check in the fridge before buying milk as there was no point in wasting it, and that he was welcome to use any milk she bought. She didn’t know why she did this, wrote this note. Because if He really had gone, then she couldn’t understand what the force was that drove her to try and do good. So maybe He hadn’t gone after all, maybe He was still there, watching undetected, another pair of eyes trying to catch her out.